Page 3 of Fragments of the Lost
Hailey and I sitting on our towels, side by side, sipping the last of our cold sodas from the cooler, all the ice melted, the afternoon sun baking my exposed skin. Sophie Bartow’s shadow falling over Hailey—they’d been in some class together the year before, but I didn’t know her well—staking out a spot beside her, calling back to someone over her shoulder.
I saw Max first, who I’d heard had started seeing Sophie earlier that summer. He was weaving around towels with Caleb beside him, midconversation, when Max looked up to where Sophie waited, caught my eye, and waved. I waved back.
Caleb tilted his head to the side, said something to Max. To hear Caleb tell it, it was the first time he saw me. He asked Max who I was. And Max said, “Her? That’s Jessa Whitworth. Julian’s sister.” I’d known Max for years, a permanent fixture from the years of Julian’s Little League teams. He knew me as the younger sister of their star player, scorekeeper, stat recorder, occasional Gatorade provider, until I was old enough to grow sick of it all.
“Hey, Jessa,” Max said as he took up his spot beside Sophie. But Caleb stopped in front of me, his shadow blocking the heat of the sun for a moment.
“Hi, I’m Caleb,” he said.
I knew who Caleb was, knew vaguely in the way that you know most people in your year and above, in the way that hearing the stories and rumors about them made you feel like you already knew them. And how the years below kind of faded into the background—like I did for Caleb.
He sat beside me on my beach towel, like he’d known me forever, and took a sip of my soda. I was kind of horrified and said, “I’m not that kind of girl, you know.”
Which made him laugh. “We need to be friends first, don’t we?” he said.
I nodded.
He leaned close and whispered, “I can’t stand Max’s new girlfriend.”
I pulled back, shaken. “What are you doing?”
“I just told you something I haven’t even told my best friend. And I’m trusting you not to tell. Friends, right?”
I rolled my eyes. “You really, really want my soda, don’t you?”
“Oh God, you have no idea. Please. I’m dying here.”
I squinted against the glare. “I’ll trade you for some sunscreen. My nose is burning. I can feel it.”
“Not a fan of the sun?” he asked.
“On the contrary. I love the sun. But in a cruel twist of fate, the sun and I can’t be in contact for more than thirty minutes at a time without SPF 50. And I’m all out.”
He laughed, and the sound caught me by surprise. He took the hat from his head, lowered it over my own, readjusted the brim, and tapped it once, as I tucked my shoulder-length hair behind my ears. He reached his fingers for a wisp of blond hair that blew across my face, brushing it aside.
“Better?” he asked.
I peered up at him from under the brim, his hair moving with the breeze, the side of his mouth turned up in a grin as he watched me back. Caleb looked like he and the sun were made for each other. His light brown hair streaked nearly blond in sections, his tan golden.
I took a long sip before handing the soda to him, and there it was: we were friends. Our circles blending together—Hailey to Sophie, Sophie to Max, Max to Caleb. A month of hanging out that summer before we got together, but he had me right then. He had me with his ease, hooked me with the secret.
Max’s voice breaks me from the memory.
“Jessa?” It’s a whisper-yell, like he’s not supposed to do it. He must be standing at the bottom of the steps, his voice funneling up the narrow halls and crooked stairs, spanning the distance between us.
I hear water running through the pipes and imagine Caleb’s mother is in the bathroom or rinsing the dishes.
“You doing okay?” he whisper-yells.
Okay?Whatever it is I’m doing, it’s not okay on any level. My hand is on the ball cap, scared to move it from its spot on the door, as if I am the great disturbance of this room. The air changes. The room changes. The meaning behind Max’s words changes.
“Tell her I need some tape,” I call. This is the only thing I can think of to say. I can picture Caleb on his bed, trying not to smile. The way he thought it was cute when I said the wrong thing.
I prop open the first box, scoop up the clothes, the ball cap, all of these things that Caleb once loved, and I pile them into the bottom of the box with a knot in my throat. I look around the room, expecting that something will have changed, but everything remains the same.
We’re here. Caleb’s gone.
I hear Max talking low downstairs again, Caleb’s mother’s voice in response, and he’s the one who brings the tape. I hear his slow steps on the wooden stairs, the creak that Caleb used to leap over on the way down. Max shuffles his sneakers against the rug at the entrance, and I can almost hear the zing that would always come after, when Caleb touched the light switch—how he always seemed to accidentally charge himself on the rug, shocking himself on the way in.
